Des Moines, Iowa

with sizeable financial services and publishing businesses based there, as well. “Des Moines is the number three insurance center in the world,” says Deputy City Manager, Matt Anderson. “For the last hundred years, we’ve been an insurance and financial services-based economy, in addition to the agricultural economy around us.” With that diverse an economy - based on government, insurance, finance, and agriculture - Anderson believes that Des Moines is “as close to recession-proof as you can get. We did not feel the hit from the 2008-09 recession,” he notes. “Sure, there were little pockets of weakness and our development definitely slowed as the capital markets slowed, but we didn’t have the mass layoffs and foreclosures that a lot of our peer cities did. Therefore, when capital did loosen back up and interest rates dropped, we were not starting from a dead stop; we were starting from a running start. And we’ve had a really great run for the last eight to ten years. It’s been in all sectors – hotel growth, residential, office attraction, arts, entertainment and culture, industrial, warehousing – you name it. I don’t think we have a weak sector, right now. We are in an enviable position with the breadth of our development going on.” Over the last decade or so, much of Des Moines’ development has been centrally located. “We’ve more than doubled our downtown residential population, which has been instrumental in adding vitality to our downtown,” explains Economic Development Director, Erin Olson-Douglas. “We’ve really transitioned from a five-day-a-week, eight- to-five, business district to an 18-hour, seven-day- a-week city. And that has to do, in large part, to the new residents living downtown. And it ranges from Millennials to empty-nesters; both demographics have found downtown to be a choice place to live. Not only do we have new residents moving into downtown from beyond the region, we also get suburbanites moving into downtown from within and around our region.” Des Moines is also a vibrant sports town –“the major league of the minor league,” says Olson- Douglas. “We have the minor league versions of a lot of our Midwestern, iconic teams.” In fact, in DES MOINES , IOWA